Am I Raising My Son to be Single or Settle?

I consider my parenting style to be "old school" mixed with a little "new school." I took some of what I learned growing up with my mom and then I also had my own ideas of what I should be doing as a parent. As a single mother I knew raising a son would be something I needed to do on purpose. I am married now which I think was good for my son to see. He is 15 but I raised him as a single parent for majority of his life. I had my "board of advisers" my male friends and family members who supported me and my son. People have a genuine interest in him and want to see him succeed. He also now has my husband to look up to and has bonded with him in the best way. He has more positive male role models than he will ever need.

I cook Sunday through Thursday on Friday and Saturday there's left overs and sometimes we go out to eat. I love to cook and try new recipes. I am against fast food as a means of providing daily nutrition for my son. I set the standard that fast food is something that happens every once and a while, never a daily event. With that my son really appreciates home cooked meals. He makes special requests for certain meals. When I cook to contribute to a church function or a big family dinner, he rushes to eat my food first. He is not a fan of hot dogs and baked beans or boxed macaroni and cheese. He wants a plate full of food, he wants a starch, a vegetable and some meat or fish.

Education is a priority, I am on my son to learn AND retain. Despite some of the teachings in school, I want my son to be able to think critically. Sometimes he is penalized for thinking outside of the box, because he did not give the teacher the exact answer that was written in her answer key in the teacher's edition of the text book. In those instances I met with the teacher and challenged her to allow my son and other students to think outside the box as this is something they will need to learn for life. In life there are no grades, only consequences based on decisions you make. I want him to be a thinker. He is not perfect, I wish he would turn in his homework, I don't know what it is about doing homework and not turning it in. He says he forgets. So for the most part he's on top of things.

I want my son to be well rounded, I want him to succeed academically, but he is also an athlete and I support him in all of the sports he plays. I am at most of his games and discuss the games and practices with him. My son watches ESPN in the morning when he wakes up and would go to sleep to it at night. So I would discuss sports with him. I had to stay on top of things so that he would feel comfortable talking to me about and not feel like he had to teach me all of the time.  I also exercise and engage in physical activity. I have played basketball with my son, I'm not very good but hey I'll get out there. We've played tennis together. My son is very competitive and likes to talk a lot of trash. We play games on the wii. I like to be active with him. I feel that when we learn what our children's interests are and we make it our interests too, it keeps the communication lines open. Communication is what we lose first when they become teenagers so we have to set that foundation early.

With my son I stress to him how blessed he is. I do not want him to take anything for granted. I let him know that not all children live the way that he does. For the past three years he has been spending two Saturdays a month bagging groceries in the church food pantry. He would come home and say how many people came and how many families he fed. He would be happy. I thought I would have to wake him and encourage him to go, but he starts making plans Friday night about getting up Saturday morning. On Sundays we are in church. He is a young usher.

With all of this being said, as my son gets older, I think about the kind of woman he would bring home, what would his dating life would be like.  Would he have choices?  I do not want to come off like I think my son will be a perfect man but I have concerns. I see the young ladies today and they seem to be struggling with serious self esteem issues that lead to other behavior issues. Many boys are being raised to disrespect women. Many women don't cook so I know they are not teaching their daughters to cook. My son sees the way that I carry myself and I know he is going to look for some of those characteristics in a woman. He is well mannered and polite. I don't want this to be seen as a weakness. With every generation, the respected traditions gets lost. Are there parents out there raising their daughters to be respectful of themselves and others, are they being raised to use their minds instead of their bodies to get ahead? Are they being taught how to appreciate genuine qualities in other people? Will they know their own worth so they will be able to appreciate the worth in another? Will they be able to see past where he could take them or what he could give them?

The New Blended Family: We are NOT The Brady Bunch!

The New Blended Family

The blended family was first viewed on television with The Brady Bunch. Back then the man and the woman were married, then divorced then remarried. Each had three children so together they had six children. They had to resolve the natural conflicts of a blended family. Today the blended family can look a little different. There is a mother and a father; they may not have ever married. Either or both of them decide to get married to another person.  There may be children that come from that relationship. Now you have a mother, a father, their children with each other, and then their children with their spouse or other people. What the Brady Bunch did not show was the interaction with the outside parent. When people think about blended families they think about how to make it work within the confines of their home. We have to think in a wider range to include the biological parents sometimes otherwise known as the “baby mom” or the “baby dad”(terms I despise for various reasons) and their other children who are related to your child(ren) and who are involved in the parenting process.

In my situation, I raised my son alone with the support of my family. His father is present but not active in his life. In the beginning that made me angry. He wanted a relationship with me and we would be one happy family, but that relationship was not a healthy one so that would not have ever happened and staying together for the sake of looking like a family seemed disadvantageous. It seemed that he could not be an active parent unless I stayed single. When I didn’t have a boyfriend, he was involved, but when I had a boyfriend he stayed away. So this made for a distant relationship between him and our son. My son plays sports so his father comes to a few sporting events and he sees him on holidays and birthdays. Sometimes he sees him on other days but nothing consistent. Now that I’m married his interaction is almost nonexistent. He now also has two young children with another woman. My son loves his younger brother and sister and would like to see them more often but his father’s estranged relationship with the mother does not allow it. When they were first born, my son was able to see them more often but now that his father and she are not in a relationship he does not see them as much.

My husband has two children with a woman who is involved. They were in a relationship, engaged but never married.  Due to their own reasons, the relationship ended. I was not introduced to the mother of his children until after we were engaged. She knew about me, that he had a girlfriend and she was not too happy about me being around the children. She even threatened that he would not be able to see the children until she met me. The children love their dad very much; he does everything from taking them to and from school to taking them to all sports practices and games to taking them to doctor’s appointments. He is more involved in his kids’ lives than some fathers who actually live in the home with their children.  He and the mother argue quite a bit, there seems to be a competition for who buys the best gifts and who has the most fun stuff when it’s their turn to have the kids: frequent trips to Chuck E. Cheese and Dave & Busters & amusement parks, fast food for breakfast and dinner, etc. Needless to say a lot of money was being spent and the children started to expect “something fun” every time they came over. Not to say this is bad, but there was no balance. The parents were so caught up in trying to trump each other, the kids were not receiving the discipline and structure that all children need. This is something my husband and I discussed when we got serious. He began to realize this was not healthy for the children. They needed structure and boundaries; it can’t always be Disney land when they go to daddy’s house. This was an adjustment for the children and they resisted at first but have since been happy with how things are now. Not so much chaos, they know what to expect.  “Fun Stuff” still happens just not every day and when their behavior warrants such an event.

The ideal situation would be that everyone knew their role and everyone got along, but we do not live in an ideal world. We have people who were once in an intimate relationship that are no longer in the relationship, now in other relationships and everyone is connected by children. Ideally the people who were once in relationships get along and can have positive relationships with the new partners. Because the relationships may have ended on a sour note or the some people may be resentful of the other who decided to move on with their life, things can be difficult. We hear stories about celebrities like Will and Jada and Ashton and Demi who have forged these co-parenting relationships with their previous significant others either living across the street or in the same mansion with them. That is not my reality and I’m sure it is not yours. We have to do the best we can to make the situation a positive one and if we focus more on the health and happiness of the children we should be successful. We have to let go of the past hurts and negative thoughts about the other person no matter our role. Our kids are blessed to have so many people who want to be in their lives.  We just have to know our role and not let personal feelings get in the way of our parenting.

As a stepmother I was first unsure of my role. For my husband it was easier, I think.  He was able to continue doing what he does with his kids, with my son because my son’s father is not that active. For me it’s different. Custody is shared, they are with their mom sometimes then they are with us sometimes. I feel that she might be threatened that I want to take her place when that is not the case for me at all. I feel like my role is more complimentary to what they already do.  Nobody has to disappear for me to be involved. I can still love them and spend time with them. However I am aware that she feels there are things that only she can do with them and if I were to do them I would be overstepping my bounds. I have not figured out all of those things yet because I tend to put myself in others’ shoes and things that I wouldn’t have a problem with, other people do. This is a work in progress and hopefully one day she will feel comfortable with me being around and not feel like I am her competition but more of a complement, meaning I fill in where there is a need and add to the love that already exists.

What are your thoughts?